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Jonathan Gruber’s ‘Stupid’ Budget Tricks

His ObamaCare candor shows how Congress routinely cons taxpayers.

Nov. 14, 2014 6:51 p.m. ET

As a rule, Americans don’t like to be called “stupid,” as Jonathan Gruber is discovering. Whatever his academic contempt for voters, the ObamaCare architect and Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist deserves the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his candor about the corruption of the federal budget process.

In his now-infamous talk at the University of Pennsylvania last year, Professor Gruber argued that the Affordable Care Act “would not have passed” had Democrats been honest about the income-redistribution policies...